Woven textile fabrics, of which include a plurality of interwoven warp and weft yarns, are used for all manner of applications, including apparel, home furnishings, recreational products, and industrial applications. Because of the expense associated with spinning of yarns, and weaving of textile fabrics, techniques have been developed for manufacture of nonwoven fabrics from fibrous or filamentary materials. Typically, manufacture of nonwoven fabrics entails creating a web or batt of fibrous or filamentary material, and treating the web in a manner to provide the resultant fabric with the desired physical properties.
One manner of making nonwoven fabrics, which has met with widespread commercial success, involves hydraulically treating the fabric with high-pressure liquid (water) streams, which act to entangle and integrate the fibrous material. Such hydroentangling techniques are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,485,706, to Evans, hereby incorporated by reference.
More recently, hydroentangling techniques have been developed for manufacture of nonwoven fabrics whereby patterning and imaging of the fabric can be affected as the fabric is hydraulically formed on a three-dimensional image transfer device. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,098,764, 5,244,711, 5,822,823, and 5,827,597, the disclosures of which are hereby expressly incorporated by reference, relate to the use of such three-dimensional image transfer devices. Use of these types of devices permits greatly enhanced versatility in the production of hydroentangled nonwoven fabrics.
Recognizing the efficient means by which three-dimensional patterns can be achieved through manufacture of nonwoven fabrics by hydroentanglement, efforts have been made to treat woven textile fabrics hydraulically in order to form images and patterns therein.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,967,456 and 4,995,151, hereby incorporated by reference, disclose techniques for hydro-enhancing and hydro-patterning fabric. Practice of the hydro-enhancing and hydro-patterning techniques requires the use of a mesh screen. The mesh screen is embossed with the desired three-dimensional pattern, which is then used as the foraminous surface against which woven fabrics are treated with hydraulic energy. The use of mesh screens, however, has an inherent and deleterious flaw which precludes the acceptable treatment on continuous yardages of woven material. In order to form a mesh screen to be used to treat continuous yardage of material, the screen must be linked at its terminal edges, thus forming a loop or belt. Where the terminal ends of the mesh screen meet to for the loop, there are a plurality of wire ends that must be adjoined. A seam is formed across the length of the formed loop, a seam that becomes part of the overall three-dimensional pattern and creates a repeating defect in the course of treatment of continuous yardage.
The present invention contemplates a method of applying hydraulic energy in conjunction with a three-dimensional image transfer device, whereby a specific and desirable pattern defined by the image transfer device is durably imparted to the woven fabric. The use of a three-dimensional image transfer device is necessary to facilitate the efficient and commercially viable use of the method.
It has been found that the use of an image transfer device allows for the controlled expression of the fibrous content of the warp and weft yarns (referred to as “blooming”) comprising a woven textile fabric. When these warp and weft yarns comprise variations in coloration, hue, luster, or intensity, unique aesthetic results are obtained. Such aesthetic results are most visually striking when the image transfer device used has a pronounced variation in the three-dimensional foraminous surfaces.